This paper takes as its starting place the rich context of many knowledge workers today—highly distributed, increasing project focused, typically atypical days, infrastructural—and attempts to push past extant descriptions of their practices as ‘flexible’. Using empirical data informed by a practice theory lens, we expand the understanding of flexibility with regard to work by augmenting how worker disposition, as well as the ability to engage with agility in dynamic circumstances, should be considered as a factor when examining and designing for this population. We make several contributions of interest to the wider CSCW community. First, we distinguish between those who showcase flexible practices and those who proactively orient around flexibility. We call this second group ‘elastic workers’. Second, we raise new questions for us as scholars and designers keen to exploit the conceptual and pragmatic intersection of technology and work. These questions create opportunities to explore different methods for understanding complex phenomena such as flexibility, as well as understanding how we might design for this phenomenon with more foresight in the future.

中文翻译：

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柔性海龟和弹性章鱼：探索知识工作中的敏捷实践

本文以当今许多知识工作者的丰富背景为起点，这些知识工作者分布广泛，关注项目的增加，通常是非典型的日子，基础设施建设，并试图超越对他们的“灵活”实践的现有描述。利用实践理论视角提供的经验数据，我们通过增加如何考虑工人的性格以及在动态情况下参与敏捷的能力，来扩展对工作灵活性的理解，这是在检查和设计时应考虑的因素。这个人口。我们为更广泛的CSCW社区做出了一些有趣的贡献。首先，我们区分了那些展示灵活实践的人和那些积极地关注灵活性的人。我们称第二组为“弹性工作者”。第二，当我们的学者和设计师热衷于利用技术和工作的概念性和实用性相交时，我们提出了新的问题。这些问题提供了探索不同方法以理解复杂现象（例如灵活性）的机会，以及了解我们将来如何以更大的远见来设计这种现象的机会。